


Until the End of Time

by Nelja-in-English (Nelja)



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Angst, Blood, Brain Surgery, Dark, Demonic Possession, Dreams and Nightmares, Gen, Horror, Jossed by Journal 3, Lucid Dreaming, M/M, Mindfuck, Other, Pre-Canon, Real or not real, Spoilers - The Last Mabelcorn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-03
Updated: 2016-08-03
Packaged: 2018-07-29 02:47:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7667332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nelja/pseuds/Nelja-in-English
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bill has no intention to leave Ford alone. Breakups with nightmare demons are the worst.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Until the End of Time

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Jusqu'à la fin des temps](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5124332) by [Nelja](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nelja/pseuds/Nelja). 



For the first few seconds, Ford can only feel the suffocating pain in his heart, crushed by sorrow, disenchantment and despair. Then his rational mind takes the upper hand again - it’s good at this - and reminds him that if Bill wanted to, nothing would stop him from possessing Ford’s body right now and opening the Portal.

(Nothing would have stopped him, says a tiny bitter voice in his head, from taking your face in his hands and convincing you Fiddleford was a coward and making you destroy the work with your own hands. You’d have believed him. You’d have given him everything he wanted only a few minutes ago.)

No, Ford gave himself to a demon until the end of time, and the Portal stands closed for only one reason.

_It will be fun to watch you try, cute even._

Ford doesn’t want to fight but he has to, he must show Bill Cipher how he struggles when he’s crushed by his power - don’t think about it in these terms, don’t think about it at all - because the demon (a monster, not a muse, not a benevolent spirit) will soon be bored of his despair, and giving him the show he wants is Ford’s only option to buy the world a reprieve.

He closes the door leading to the Portal, throws the key in the water drain. He could still open it, by making a new key, or with a well calibrated explosive charge. But it would be long, and Ford hopes Bill won’t achieve it alone. Bill can see everything, but it doesn't mean he _understands_ science, does he? He needed Ford to build the Portal, he didn’t play with his heart just for the fun of it. Ford has to believe at least this, or he’ll go mad.

That night, Bill enters his body, leads him to the door and hammers on it, bruising his fingers until the door is smeared with blood, and all the while he laughs in Ford’s mouth, as if it was exactly what he wanted.

Ford makes every effort to hate him as much as he loved it. It’s terribly painful.

* * *

Nightmares start the third night. Maybe Bill wanted him to believe in a respite. (Maybe, the second night, Ford just crushed his pillow without really sleeping.)

It starts with his classmates mocking the six-fingered hands Ford hides beneath his back. But, jostling him, they raise his hands high before his face, to expose them to him and to the world. Ford doesn't scream, he knows it will only make things worse, but he can’t help the tears rolling on his cheeks.

Then one of them pulls from his pocket a huge pair of scissors.

“You want to be normal, don’t you? You want to be like us?”

It doesn't hurt when the extra finger on his right hand is cut, even if blood flows on his arm. The finger on his left hand follows, joins the other in a dark red pool, and Ford wants to throw up.

“It didn't work,” a classmate comments with a raucous laugh. “Still a monster, except it no longer shows.” 

“We can fix that,” the one with the scissors says.

Ford expects them to cut another finger, but the scissors’ two points directly push into his eyes. Again, he doesn't feel anything, but the darkness closes around him in a way he knows to be final.

He does no longer know, except by a Maybe imaginary tingle, when they cut his other fingers, his nose, his ears. When he falls on the ground, he realizes that he no longer has legs. Then the scissors stab his back, to the heart, and here he feels at once all the pain of everything he endured, not the taunts, the bullying and the mutilations, no, this other thing that was done to him…

He forgot.

He’s floating in the air of the Dreamscape. Bill is with him, stroking his hair, and Ford loves him so much it hurts.

“I’m here, Fordsy, I’m with you.” Ford wants it to last forever.

“You know the funniest thing?” Bill asks. “It’s that you don’t remember.”

“Remember what?” Ford lazily asks.

The triangle suddenly becomes huge, his voice sepulchral. His warm, large hands enfold Ford’s body. 

“That the world will be destroyed because of you, my friend, and that I will laugh watching it burn.”

Ford remembers everything all at once. He struggles, but Bill holds him firmly, laughing.

“I can break your heart as many different times as I want, Sixer, til I get bored of it. But we have a lot of time left before that.”

Ford awakens in his bed, realizes that the first part is a nightmare, that the second one is not, and it’s worse than everything.

I cannot be killed by sand that I dream, he whispers, nor is there any such thing as a dream within a dream.

Except he can no longer be sure of this last point, or be sure of everything. He turns on the light and looks up - in the most basic occultism books he owns, the ones he never entirely read - a section about how to know you’re in a dream, how you can control it.

You can’t read in a dream, the book proudly explains. Ford bites his lip. He did it, many times. Dreams inspired by Bill (forced by Bill) must have a particular quality.

Count your fingers, the book says again. If there are not five of them, you’re probably dreaming. Ford bitterly laughs and thrown the book against the wall. He’s in a nightmare Bill created for him, isn’t he? Or everything is true, who’s to say? Reality is now a nightmare Bill created for him.

* * *

One day Fiddleford knocks at his door. He’s hesitant and ready to make up. Ford would like nothing more than being able to reply the same way. But this day there’s a demon in him, making him a terrified spectator in his own body.

“I’m sorry, Ford. I guess you are too. But we need to talk about this Portal.”

“Exactly what I was going to say!” Bill replies, enthusiastic and lively. Fiddleford seems to relax.

 _Recognize him_ , Ford wants to scream. _You know he possessed me sometimes! Look at his eyes! If you can’t recognize him, who will?_ His mouth doesn’t even tremble.

He listens to himself friendly explaining that he condemned the door leading to the Portal, because Fiddleford was entirely right. But he regrets it now - it would be better to entirely dismantle it than to just deactivate it. His old friend replies with a delighted smile. Ford wonders when was the last time Fiddleford smiled to the real him (not that he’d deserve it, monster, destroyer of the world).

“You had a key too,” Bill asks with a smile. “My best friend, whom I trust more than everyone.”

_Don’t listen to him._

“I threw it away too,” Fiddleford says, squirming embarrassedly in his chair.

“It seems great minds think alike,” says Ford’s body in an almost seductive tone. _Was he that obvious with me? How could I be so stupid? Stop blushing, Fiddleford!_ “Blowing it up is the only option left.” 

“I don’t think so,” Fiddleford says firmly. “It’s stable this way, isn’t it? An explosion could induce a chain reaction.”

Ford is so relieved. _Thank you, my friend, thank you._

“Stable? Do you really think so?” Bill replies, stifling a laugh. “I think you’re not worried enough.”

Fiddleford starts saying “I think you’re not worried enough about the possibility of an explosion.” But before he finishes his sentence, Bill grasps Ford’s crossbow and laughs hysterically. “Proof is, you didn’t foresee _this_!”

Fiddleford panics, of course, but his first reaction is surprisingly effective. Instead of freezing, he jumps through the window. Luckily he runs fast. He succeeds in fleeing out of range. If Ford controlled his body he’d sigh in relief. But he only feels himself shoot a few more bolts. 

“Bah,” Bill grins, before evaporating from Ford’s mind.

Fiddleford hates him for good now, Ford notes. He won’t come again. It’s better this way. Let no one ever come here again. Let everyone fear him as a result of the rumors that will run in Gravity Falls.

If someone could love Ford in this world (Bill doesn’t count, Bill lied to him, he gave him happiness beyond all imagining then shattered it into painful glass shards) they would be in danger and it’s better this way.

As for himself, he won’t ever talk to anyone without looking at their eyes first. (Bill had him believe he was the only one, but it was a lie, like everything, how many pawns does he use?)

* * *

Ford finds a functional protection circle, after intense research and many failures.

Just after leaving it, he feels Bill’s presence in him. It was so warm in the past, does his heart beat wildly only with horror and fear, or is it an old habit?

Ford concentrates, tries to take back control over his own body, but to no amount. Not only can he not move as he wants, but he’s not even sure his emotions come from him, such is the control Bill has over his hormonal flux.

Bill jubilantly destroys the circle he drew, tears up the book it came from, then burns it page by page.

Then he turns Ford’s paper knife against him. He starts slicing his clothes, making them fall on the floor. Then he cuts the body parts that, without killing him, will give the most blood and the most pain - the palms of his hands, his disturbingly twitching penis - and starts writing his message on the floor.

_Never forget whom you belong to, Fordsy. Your own oath sealed it. Til the end of time._

He feels Bill’s jubilation inside him, born from his pain, mixing with it in a terrifying way. He knows he’s awake, it hurts too much. Bill can’t make him love it, not in the real world. He’d love to be sure of it.

Then Ford’s bloody hand strokes his stomach, tracing a picture his eyes can’t lower to see, as they can’t cry. His feet drag him to the bathroom’s mirror. He tries to hold back every step, but he only makes his muscles tense and painful.

On his stomach is drawn a blood triangle, whose eye seems to burn a hellish flame. His eyes glow a sickly yellow light (how he loved it once, how he saw himself becoming more than he could be). It’s his face, though he sees Bill, in the expression, the grin.

His feet move forward without his consent, to the mirror. He doesn’t understand what Bill wants before feeling himself bend forward and kiss the icy metal.

Part of him wants to die of shame. Another part wants to give in and extract from his nightmare, from the burn in his body and the cold on his lips, all the pleasure he can. The disgust he forces on himself seems artificial.

Bill releases him then, leaning against the blood-covered mirror.

Ford holds back to the only thing he has left.

He’s always had a good memory. He remembers that circle.

He won’t stop fighting.

But for now he absolutely can’t start again. He’s afraid, and he feels dirty. He takes back his Journals, furiously strikes all the good he has thought of Bill (or rather a tiny part, it was an impersonal work document) and covers these pages with his blood and tears.

 _A true gentleman_. He can’t understand how he loved him that much. He understands very well how he loved him that much. Even now, re-reading these books, old petrified feelings, old buried memories burst in his heart like foul bubbles.

He writes in a new page everything he knows about Bill, centered on the way to fight him. It’s desperately short.

With the circles, he realizes, he can conceal the Journals now, despite the demon’s effigies in it. He can hide them from Bill’s eyes. Or he could, if he could close his mind to him. He surprises himself, not having given up yet.

“I don’t belong to you,’ he whispers. “My promises have exactly as much worth as yours.” (He knows it’s not true, he won’t ever betray like Bill, never as much, but he can try.)

* * *

When he thinks about metal to protect himself against mental invasions, he certainly mixes memories of lead against nuclear explosions, of demons repelled by cold iron, of tinfoil hats against the government’s airwaves, and of the X-men comics he used to read as a child (he daydreamed about being Hank McCoy, not Magneto, but he’ll take what he can get)

He forges the plate himself, even if it’s not his specialty. When he grasps it, it burns the skin of his fingers. For a while he stays stupefied, wondering why he has this feeling of unreality, then he remembers. He’s in a protection circle. It’s not Bill who made him burn himself. He did it, not even on purpose. He can even drop it and put cold water on his hands.

He should do exercises to remember the difference.

Meanwhile, he operates on himself in front of equipment made from two mirrors, under local anesthesia.

He knows the plate doesn’t go in his brain, he won’t even have to cut the meninges. He just has to place it against them, in the exact place. He planned everything. He could seal it on the outside, but he fears it would be too visible, it could be teared off (just as his fingers were almost cut off - ah no it didn’t happen, it was just a nightmare, but he still should be cautious).

He quickly cuts open the skin of his skull with a scalpel. The incision lets the blood trickle, fortunately not too much, he can’t allow himself to faint. Inside the cut, in the double mirror, he can see his own brain, belonging to the greatest genius, the greatest idiot living in this century. 

It’s exactly the right size, the right shape. He inserts the plate - his hands can’t tremble, if they do he’s dead, and it won’t save the world. Bill can manipulate the first person who comes into this house, have him read in the Journals how to reopen the Portal, and it will be the end. Ford cares about what happens after his death, certainly more than he cares about his life.

He feels the blood run on his neck, past the anesthetized zone, and tickle him. This display of blood and viscera without any pain reminds him of his dreams. He will have to X-ray himself, to check that it really happened, that Bill didn’t manipulate him in dreams to make him believe he was protected. But he must also act with all the precision of reality; he’ll have only one try, without any warping of his surroundings to make up for a failure.

Don’t tremble. The plate slots into his skull, with the pleasant certainty of well-taken measures. Slowly, Ford stitches the incision with a big needle and surgical thread. It still doesn’t hurt. In a few hours he’ll know to what extent lack of experience had him butcher his nerves, and how long the pain will last (all his life is a possibility).

It’s not a dramatic failure anyway, since sedatives are effective this night. He sleeps. He dreams. He knows it’s a dream when Bill appears to him.

“You’re perfect,” he mockingly exclaims. He claps, and the sound echoes like a crowd was applauding behind him. “I knew you would amuse me, but not how much!” He brushes with his finger the scar, already half-healed in the dream. “I’m so pleased with you, Fordsy, your efforts are so funny. I’m so happy I met you. You are all that I expected and more.”

Ford doesn’t know anymore whether Bill mocks him or tells the truth, and he couldn’t say which idea horrifies him more.

The demon whispers in his ear, strokes his neck, and Ford shudders with dread and a false pleasure, unable to move. “You’re a monster, your universe and your species will be destroyed because of you at the end, and you’re mine exactly until this instant. You won’t ever think about anyone or anything else, dreaming or awake, you do know it, don’t you?”

(It’s just a nightmare. Ford knows it. But it won’t stop being real when he wakes up.)


End file.
